CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Frampton Swings With The Meatballs

Rock superstars rarely stoop to guest starring on TV series, and dashing Peter Frampton's appearance on Black Sheep Squadron illustrated why. For instead of knocking the battery off Robert Conrad's shoulder, rock's #1 glamourboy easily could have passed for one of Pappy's baaing Lambs.

Frampton's role was that of an English earl who owns a plantation on the Konga Isle (nicknamed England). Being a patriotic Limey, he displayed his colonialism by having a faithful native companion called King George as his boy Friday. While Peter maintained an Inn of Hospitality for the sick and the wounded, George would chitchat about how Americans talk funny and sweat a lot.

Each morning Frampton raised the British flag, sang "God Save The Queen," and then brewed his tea.

While overhead the Black Sheep fought with the Japs, Frampton (rooted to the soil) explained the art of pouring tea to downed pilots. "I'll be mother," he suggested, but quickly added,

"Uh.. .that's whoever pours the tea."

Finally, during a discussion about cosmetology with one of the Lambs over the radio, Frampton accidentally revealed the secret location of his retreat. The Japs pinpointed the frequency, and holocaust struck England. Lotsa ho-hum as the B.S. Squadron tried to rescue the Limey and his pet Negro while the British flag continued to wave steadfastly amidst the brawl. And mighty Frampton?To paraphrase Pappy Boyington, at fifty feet you could've knocked him down with a well-placed coconut.

XX-TRA BONUS: For the denoufnent, Frampton mouthed this philosophical nugget—"Life's grand as long as you've got a spot of tea." 'then he and King George paddled like contented pups toward France.

Sheesh, where's Johnny Rotten now that ya really need him?

Robot A. Hull

Punk Hits The Pits: R.I.P.I!

With the dissolution of the Slob Pistols , punk has been relegated to the junk pile where slinkies rust. Yet, in order to beat a dead issue black and blue, NBC recently aired an episode of CPO Sharkey which cartoonized the Punk Rock Movement to such a deplorable degree that it soon developed into an official obit.

The show begins with Rickies' Sharks describing an average punkto CPO La Bimbo. Their fascination hinges on the razor blade schtick. Rickies: "Why a guy could whisper to some girl who's wearin' 'em as earrings and end up with a nose job!" The gobs decide to y uk it up by taking a peek at some genuine gunky punks.

Cut to a pogo club called The Pits. Inside, the Dickies (a 3rd-rate L. A. Vom-hoax) are performing such clownish tunes as "Walk Like An Egg" andthe Banana Splits'theme song.

The Pits' inhabitants, resembling plasticized Hell's Angels, jump up and down with an anarchic, stumbling zeal which prompts Rickies to wisecrack: "I used to do that around the house killing cockroaches." A goofy analogy: Freddie & The Dreamers doin' the Fab Freddie on McHale's Navy.

Quinine, The Pits' graffiti expert, attempts to explain the significance of "punk" to the Sharkey gang—"Uh, conceptual art, you know, pogo, y'know, uh, NEWWAVE...". Meanwhile, Quinine's boyfriend,

Slash, is chawin' on his Bubble Yum and threatening to slice a few Navy beanbrains. (Rickies: "I can feel the fungus crawling up my leg.") Q.'s other fella, bazooka Joe, calls a halt to the impending violence so Rickies' chumps split.

Later, Quinine surprises CPO El Toro at his office and offers to teach him howto pogo. Rickies (no filthy-minded Bukowski) phones Q.'s mommy, and all three meet over shakes at Jack-in-the-Box for a heartrending reconciliation scene. Quinine then decides to go straight Oust like the hippies cured by the Mod Squad) and becomes a WAVE in the Action Navy (the new, new wave, I guess). Rickies, of course, signs up for pogo lessons.

Vive lepunque!!!

Robot A. Hull

PTA Takes PCPs On PBS

SECOND CITY TELEVISION

(PBS) _

It's another moo-inducing evening of squid documentaries and specials on solar heating with popsicle sticks on the local PBS outlet.. until the commercials begin. Commercials on PBS? There they are—Top Secret, the mystery hygiene product for "that time that comes every spring." Suck on some Surfs: they make your breath feel like the early morning dew on a golf course. The Lone Ranger rides up with some Silver Bullet Suppositories, followed by the handy solution for non-smokers and non-chewers alike: Tobacco Paste! Then it's blurbs for upcoming shows like Disco Farming, Masquerade Funeral and The Undersea World of Marcel Cousteau, world's greatest underwater mime.

Have disgruntled PBS subscribers finally cast off their horn rims and taken over the cameras, demanding fat blob' Ivory commercials and My Friend Flicka? Nope, it's just another pleasantly abnormal half hour of Second City Television, Public Tube's craziest show with the sole exception of Championship Fishing.

Bossed by head writer and twitch Compiler Harold Ramis, the SCTV crew plots as well as performs their own strange material. Ramis, an expert at stimulating logic-withdrawal and sweating on cue, is joined by some even weirder escapees from the wrong I sicle of the glass slide: Andrea Martin, who specializes in "frewish" types with leopard-skin minds as well as playing Rona Barrett as if her hands were tied to circlinggrackles; John Candy, who looks like Namu the killer whale disguised as Dennis the Menace; Eugene Levy, better known as SCTV News anchorman Earl Camembert, the morpo who wiggles his fingers like airborne tadpolesfpr quotes; Catherine O'Hara, strong at both dowdy old ladies who regularly misuse Quench gum and mule-eyed housethings; Joe Flaherty, who always wears the sardbnic expression of someone who has a two-headed sister locked up a in closet at home; and Dave Thomas as the Beaver.

Atypical ("the symptoms are typical of this disorder, Mr. Fosdick") SCTV show starts with a few blurbs like "Call Long Distance, it's better than having them live with you" dr a spot for the non-existent show Dan Money, Detective—"he's got a big wallet and it's loaded for mystery. " Then a quick ad for Insect Fear and they're into Dialing For Dollars, with Ramis on high-quiver as greasy-tongued host Moe Green. His wife has won the jackpot five times . Some of their movie take-offs like The Grapes Of Mud and Lust For Paint have been a little on the dry side of the snail, but their Ben Hur was funnier than two giraffes with a vacuum cleaner. John Candy plays Ben as if he were Curly of the Three Stooges, constantly getting slapped around by two Roman soldiers suspiciously looking like Abbott and Costello. God, wearing checkered pants, comes on to save the day, but only after the cast assembles to sing the theme song from Gilligan's Island.

Second City TV is a good one all right, a definite improvement on the wildebeeste commentaries and Yoga With Pasta shows PBS loves to spray at the screen. The one thing they have to do something is a take-off on Rocky And Bullwinkle, with blubber-trunk Candy as Rocky. Frostbite Falls would never balance their chromosomes again,

Rick Johnson

Quintessence Of Quirk

QUARK

(NBC)

Teevee sux (BLAH BLAH & YAKETY YAK). Like DeNiro watching American Bandstand in Taxi Driver, the frustrated viewer is tempted out of apathy to let his TV set topple overhand shatter into forgotten fragments. Tits & Ass programming has been replaced Twinkies as America's * 1 junk food;

consequently , TV rarely functions as an opiate anymore but maintains a stimulating flow of information, lacking innocence and soul while performing the duty of Great Human Pacifier. Ma & Pa Kettle warn the brats that TV will rot their noodles while government agencies claim it causes degenerates to rape and kill.

Whoa nellje! Cease fire, defenders of Good Taste, for prime time can still be salvaged . I've just seen a series that was blown in from a time warp, somewhere amidst the whirlpool of '64-'67 escapist fare, a show that in 1967 would've been dumped with Capt. Nice & Mr. Terrific but in 1978 suddenly stands out like Alfalfa's cowlick. I'm talkin' bout Quark, you lazyass Fonzie Daze boneheads, you dunces that get slurped right into the Instant Ratings Game ("maybe tonite they're gonna show Suzanne Somers WHOLE!"), you brainwashed dopes that watch all that Video Ken-L-Ration! Hey; dabblers in soft porn, switch the channel over to NBC, 8 o'clock on Fri. nites, and watch Quark, cause even tho it often totters under the weight of its obsession to spoof, its premise is solid and unshakable.

Essentially a sci-fi comedy, Quark should not be confused with TV's past accomplishments like It's About Time or My Favorite Martian (much less kiddie fodder like Far Out Space Nuts). Quark is strictly a genre spoof (HI-KLASS E.G.: Get Smart; MEDIOCRE MONSTROSITY: When Things Were Rotten ; SWILL FOR PIDGEONS: Dusty's Trail), its primary targets being those two intergalactic vestiges of '70s hype and mass-marketing, Star Trek & Star Wars. Q. takes any strategy possible to rib these pollutant novas, frequently getting carried away with its own silly cheap shots.

Richard Benjamin (formerly of He & She and now Adam Quark, commander of the United Galaxy Sanitation Dept.) is the main problem. His startled expressions resemble the facial contortions of a man with a bug up his nose. Quark is a direct poke at Shatner's Capt. Kirk, but this only comes into focus during the voice-over "Star Notes." Dick Benjy is a straight man who plays it too straight. Either Jack Webb, Rod Seriing, or William Bendix would have made a better deadpan Adam Quark.

It's the remaining cast and characters that provides Quark's spark. Ficus the Vegeton (a direct jab at Mr. Spock) works best on the satirical level. This intellectual vegetable with his double-talk infuriates Quark at the most dangerous and awkward moments.

(Q.: "I've just argued over the concept of love with a plant and lost. ") When it comes down to bellylaffs, Gene/Jean the Transmute is the funniest. At the wink of an eye, he switches from macho to homo creating the perfect vehicle for TV fag jokes (it beats watching Billy Crystal). Then there's Betty 1 & Betty 2, Quark's cleavage clones. As twins who speak in unison, Tricia & Cyb Barnstable (gaga Siv Abergs) do a superb job at satirizing silicone sweeties (esp. since jiggling boobs are the networks' plat du jour). And finally there's Andy the Robot. Andy's the weakest character because his prototype is so familiar (a cross between the Cowardly Lion & Jonathan Harris in Lost In Space).

In short, Quark's strangeness and charm is its parade of tongue-in-cheek characters, since the series falls apart when it builds entire episodes upon satire. Satire amuses mainly when incongruous elements are exploited: the more dissimilar the ingredients of a satirical bite the funnier the whole routine.

Robot A. Hull

Spoonful Of Boobs

SUGAR TIME

(ABC)__

Sugar Time, ABC's new half-hour form warmer, is technically a rock 'n' roll show, and only as such does it deserve to be catalogued. So very few programs concerned even remotely with the music biz reach our licked-dry screens that they all deserve some mention, for historical purposes if nothing else. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Barbi Benton (the bouncy one), Marianne Black (the funny one) and Didi Carr (the Didi one) star as the struggling-but-cute purveyors of disproportionately commercial, lamb-scented tunes performed with all the mute wholesomeness of a sex-changed ABBA. The fact that the entire show is primarily an open-pored showcase for viewers' Barbi fantasies is ever so subtly pointed out by the long, loving shots of Hef's ex bouncing on wet trampolines, nervous horses, shaky Manson buggies, or just plain bouncing. The other two girls are there to provide the "personalityput 'em together and you'd have a complete horse.

The script appears not to have been penned by Einstein. What few good one-liners they do get off are smothered by leering dumbbells of mammary humor with a nipple. Th4 inclusion of a stereotyped manager (Terry Kisser) as cheese-fingered protagonist doesn't help either. He possesses all the screen aura of a terrarium floor.

Sugar Time, to paraphrase a comment The Funny One made about death, is like a Bob Hope Special—you know it's coming, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. But remember, a spoonful of boobs helps the sugar go down.

Rick Johnson

Does Violence Cause TV?

by Richard C. Walls Three-Fingers Albert, Eddie the Crutch and me were sitting around getting sluiced and talking about something about TV. Fingers (that's Three-Fingers' nickname), who was a skinny little dude who knew more about dirty fighting than any pther

skinny little dude I'd ever met, had been sucking on the same bottle of T-Wee wine for about an hour but getting excited all the same while Eddie the Crutch kept mixing these malt liquor and Ripple shakes and drinking 'em in two gulps.

Fingers was getting jacked up about "the quality of violence on TV. Like the reality. I mean the..."

"Stick with the reality," I suggested.

"Yeah. Right! The reality. Like this show with the dumb cunt... " He screwed up his eyes, thinkin' hard. His whole face was screwed up. "Lemme see. Police Woman! Right. O.K. I was watching it the other night over at Stringer's, it was one of those stories where they're trying to finger this guy whose gonna bring a million tons of smack over the border or something and the police woman is passing as a hooker and there's a chase near the end where they fuck up a few cars and so far it's alright. Then at the end the dope kingpin is cornered and he draws some ugly-looking gun like I've never seen before outta this suit he's wearing and this cop whips out this snub nose and shoots him first. I don't know where they shot 'em, it coulda been in the nuts for all I know, they never show you on TV, but anyway the pusher whirls around about two and a half times and drops dead right on the spot. On his back. And I turned to Stringer and said, 'Man, this is unreal.' " He paused to nip on his bottle.

Eddie the Crutch growled. Really, like an animal. Me and Fingers just sat there lapping at our booze and waiting for him to say something, but he didn't , so Fingers says, in a quieter voice than usual, "The quality of violence on TV is pretty low."

Eddie the Crutch growled again and then rumbled out with "No it isn't. That nigger was shot in the neck." Well that settled the discussion for me but Fingers could never leave well enough alone and so he gets all excited again and starts in with"O.K.! O.K.! I got another one for ya. Man, I got a dozen of 'em, but dig this one. 1 was watching Baretta last night and these cats had 'im locked in a room with his wrist bound and even tho there's a window in the room he's like three or four floors up from this alley. So he looks out the window and sees that there's this huge pile of cardboard boxes lying on the ground just below. I was thinking 'no way' but the clown backs up for a running start and then jumps thru the window and the cardboard boxes break his fall and he starts running. Shit. He didn't even have a scratch on 'im from that goddamn window he busted thru. I mean..."

I could almost hear the dot dot dot 'cause now Eddie the Crutch had stood up and I can see he's drunk as sin and he's stomping over to where Fingers is sitting and he's looking like some kind of demented hog. He stands over Fingers and lets out a snort, which coming from his was probably a sigh, and picks the dude up like a rag doll only a rag doll as white as rice and frozen stiff. Fingers don't know any dirty tricks for this situation and me I'm about to shit with one eye on the door and one on the show and I can't move. Then Eddie the Crutch takes a few fast strides over to the window carrying this funny-looking doll and, I swear to God , hurls him thru the closed window into the alley) Which is like four stories down and no cardboard boxes. Then he goes back to his seat and sits down and lets out another snort sigh. I'm staring at this busted window and then I look over at Eddie the Crutch and I see he's waiting for me to say something.

"You're gonna have to get your window fixed, " I said. I was trying to change the subject a little, you know,. before he got the idea of doing an encore.

Eddie the Crutch chuckled, which sounded like a hippo with the croup, and said, "They'll be picking glass outta that bastard's body for a week. But it serves him right. He talked too much." Well, I can take a hint as well as anyone but I didn't know whether to run or wait for the cops or what and the tension's cut thru the whiskey so deep I'm getting shaky and I can't just sit there with this maniac and say nothing but every time I start thinking, all that comes to mind is something about TV, so before I know what I'm doing, I'm saying, "Hey man. did you see S.W.A.T. last night?"